


So Wends The World Away

by velvetjinx



Category: Shawshank Redemption - All Media Types
Genre: Fishing, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Male Friendship, Post-Canon, Recovery, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28195842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetjinx/pseuds/velvetjinx
Summary: A glimpse into Andy and Red’s lives in Zihuatanejo.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	So Wends The World Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Acephalous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acephalous/gifts).



> Thanks be to e_greer for the beta!!!!

“So how exactly _did_ you do it?”

We were sitting on deck chairs outside his house, looking down to the sea, after a dinner of fresh seafood. Nothing had ever tasted as good as that meal. 

We’d had beers with dinner, just a couple; enough to relax us. And now we had another, sipping slowly, but mostly dangling it lazily from our fingers. Just having a beer in hand was a miracle.

I honestly didn’t really expect him to answer. But Andy always was a surprising guy. With that slow, easy smile on his face, he began his story. 

I let him talk, uninterrupted, to the end—mostly because I was too stunned into silence to say anything. When he told me about crawling through the sewage pipe, I could only stare at him. He saw my expression and laughed. 

“Believe me,” he said, shaking his head. “Whatever you’re thinking… it was a hundred times worse.”

When he told me about taking the money from the bank, using the warden’s fake name, I laughed. I laughed until I thought my sides were going to split. I laughed because, in that moment, I saw how perfect his revenge was. 

“You didn’t have anything to do with the FBI coming down on the prison, did you?” I asked, already knowing the answer but wanting to hear him say it. 

His grin told me everything I needed to know before he even spoke. “I might have tipped them off with evidence about the money laundering and murders and abuses of power.”

I leaned back, resting my head on the back of the chair and staring at the blue, blue sky. Summer hadn’t meant much when I was inside. Here? It meant everything. 

“Still think hope is for fools?” I could hear the smile in Andy’s voice. It made me smile too. 

“I think sometimes hoping is all you can do.”

***

Andy was rich enough that he didn’t have to work, and told me I didn’t either. 

“I think we both deserve a rest,” he told me, smiling that slow smile, and I couldn’t help but agree.

But it wasn’t really in me to be idle, so I took up fishing. There were plenty fish to be caught at the shore, and I’d sell ‘em off to a local fish market. They didn’t give me much for them, but it made me feel like I was contributing something. I think Andy knew that, because he never asked why, but always said thank you. 

When I’d been there two weeks, as we made ourselves a vegetable stew, it all hit me at once. The tears started to flow, without permission and without mercy. 

“Red?” Andy sounded alarmed. I don’t think he’d ever seen me even close to tears. “What is it?”

“When you didn’t come out of your cell that morning,” I managed, the tears damn near choking me. “I’d heard you’d requested a rope. I thought…”

Andy’s expression turned horrified, like he’d only just realised what would have gone through my head that morning. 

“I’m so sorry, Red. I should have thought—it’s why I didn’t come to you for the rope—but I should have realised you’d find out.”

I put my hand on his arm, trying to calm him. I’d never seen him so distressed. 

“Andy, look around. Look where we are. We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t done what you did. You’d still be rotting away there, _I_ would probably still be rotting away there. The warden would still be terrorizing us all. None of this would have been possible if you hadn’t fooled us all. I don’t blame you for it. You did what you had to do.”

My own tears had dried. They never lasted long. Maybe if they had, I wouldn’t have been so stupid as a kid. 

Andy nodded, taking a deep breath that seemed to calm him. “Dinner’s ready,” he said, and we didn’t speak of it again. We didn’t need to. 

***

It was easier to adjust to life outside in Zihuatanejo. Maybe it was the town. Maybe it was the total difference to the halfway house. Maybe it was Andy’s presence, steadying like an anchor in rough waters. 

His knowledge of his innocence had kept him whole in a prison that had broken me, not that I’d realized it. But here? Well, here it felt like the broken parts could heal; the hot, hot sun melting my ragged edges like a blacksmith’s forge; the blue, blue sea cooling the join and making me whole again. 

“How long will you stay here?” I asked him one night after dinner. 

He looked out across the darkening water. He took so long to reply that at first I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. 

“I’d like to die here.” My heart was in my throat, but he saw my face and laughed. “Not anytime soon, I hope. I just mean that I’m settled here now. I can’t imagine living anywhere else unless I absolutely have to.” He smiled. “What about you?”

“I’ll be here until you get sick of me.” I intended to joke, but the words came out heavier than I meant them to. 

His smile turned, if it was possible, even more gentle. “I haven’t yet in twenty years,” he told me. “I doubt I’m gonna any time soon.”

“It’s different out here, though.”

Andy looked thoughtful. “Maybe. But your friendship got me through troubled times. I’m not going to throw it away now things are better. You’re welcome here for as long as you want. Besides,” he added, laughing, “who else am I going to find to stay in the second bedroom?”

***

I’d been there a year when Andy took up with a local woman. She was about his age, no kids, but owned her own business. It was nothing serious, until it was. 

She was a good woman. We got on well. She seemed to think I was Andy’s uncle by marriage. We didn’t tell her otherwise. Sometimes lies are safer. When she moved in with us, it was barely an adjustment. She accepted that it was my house too—even more than I did, if I was honest. In many ways I still felt like a guest. It was through no fault of Andy’s; simply that I hadn’t had a home of my own for forty years. It took some getting used to. 

If anyone deserved another chance at happiness, it was Andy Dufresne. I was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, having served my time, that I deserved a little bit of happiness too.


End file.
